Thursday, April 30, 2009

Cannot Work at Work

Facebook, Twitter, Flickr...and even YouTube.
All these sites cannot work at work.
"Access denied"
For a while now.
And everytime I think about it,
I get upset.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Work

To finish what I need to finish, I need 3 of me. Which is NOT POSSIBLE. But given this economy, is it better to have unfinishable work than no work at all? Despite the load, my top of mind today is not really about work but rather, the SWINE FLU outbreak! First I heard it was 40 deaths on Saturday, then 60 on Sunday morning, 80 by yesteryday evening and now 103!

Sunday, April 26, 2009

CIMB-SSO Botanic Gardens Music Festival: Celebrating SSO’s 30th anniversary

After the rain and a 3-hour nap, the boy's temperature was back to normal and so, we decided to catch the SSO at the Botanic Gardens. So glad we went. We all had a really good time.

Today's Programme:
J STRAUSS - Voices of Spring
BERLIOZ - Dance of the Sylphs, Rákóczy March and Will-o-the Wispsfrom La damnation de Faust, Op. 24
ARTURO MÁRQUEZ - Danzón No. 2
HAYDN - Finale: Vivace from Symphony No. 82 in C major ‘The Bear’
MENDELSSOHN - Wedding March from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Op. 61
RAVEL - Bolero

Don't Miss This!
"On May 17 ( Starts 4:45pm), the SSO will be joined by the Philharmonic Youth Winds conducted by Adrian Chiang. The award-winning ensemble, which took the Gold Medal at the inaugural 2008 Singapore International Band Festival, will perform well-loved melodies such as Imagine by John Lennon, Do Re Mi by Richard Rodgers as well as a portrait of the music of Andrew Lloyd Weber."

Living without TV

The switch's not working... so we can't switch our TV on and because the small one ran a 39+ fever the whole of yesterday & last night, we can't really entertain ourselves by going out either.

So I taught the hot kid on the block how to play 'hot cross buns' on the piano, do a dozen pages of work on his activity book and then left him to entertain himself with MindJolt games on facebook.

Err... nice.

But what's Hitachi's number?

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Awfully Chocolate


Bought during lunch... can't wait to go back home with it.

Premium brewed coffee

I'm a sucker for ads...and so I bought and am drinking a famous fast food restaurant's 'new' coffee. I can't tell the difference. It tastes just like their 'old' coffee and worse, tastes just like the coffee that spews from the coffee machine in my office!

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Manila

Last night.

We sat down to have dinner... and the lady who cleared our table walked away with a limp. I must have seen her because it occured to me that she is not old enough to be limping that way. Her legs were bowled and her hips jutted out in an awkard manner - for not a very heavy looking body, she seemed to be bearing an incredible amount of invisible weight. Curious why, I looked at her face again and saw what I missed earlier. That her smooth wrinkle-less skin which extends from her forehead, across her entire face and down to her arms were actually 'scars'. Burn scars!

An old man joined us at our table later... he was carrying one of those ubiquitous pink plastic bags - except that he had fashioned it into a shoulder bag. The plastic bag was fastened to a canvas shoulder strap by a couple of safety pins. He had with him, a plate of fried noodles. Fried plain noodles. While in my impression he smelt strange, his hair and nails were clean. I looked at the big one, the big one looked at me and we continue eating our sticks of satay with gravy, mutton soup with rice and sweet corn dessert without saying anything.

After our meal, we got up to walk for a bit. The small one had wandered off towards the back of the building thinking that we were going back to get the car. We followed him, and found, resting in a dark corner... somebody, with half a bag of aluminium drink cans sitting beside him/her.

Too much for one night.

I blurted out to the big one, " DO YOU KNOW WE ARE DAMM FORTUNATE?"

We didn't set out to see poverty and you could argue it was not proverty we saw. That we simply saw a previously injured person who has a job cleaning tables, a person who is having a simple meal and a person who is trying to make some extra money collecting cans. Regardless, I felt like how I felt travelling in Manila and seeing people make their homes on the street, under the roofs of flyovers and sleeping with the cars and traffic making their way past their heads, just only barely.

Except that I was not in Manilla last night.

I was in Singapore.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Property Porn

Visited 5 showrooms on Sunday ...

The Arte @ Thomson
Lincoln Residences
Whitley Villas
Ventura Heights @ Astrid Hill
D'Chateau @ Shelford

I call it property porn... see see only.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Another truth..

... I'm allergic to our wedding ring. Really. Haven't worn it for a while. Was asked recently by a colleague, male, 45, Irish, why if I was married, I wasn't wearing one. So alright, I started wearing it again...and it was ok for a week...but SH*T! The rashes are back on my ring finger! Forget it! I'm happily married. Be gone with the darn ring! No need to prove anything with any bondage to a piece of lousy stupid metal.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

This is true.

So I'm married to the guy for almost 8 years and.....*sigh* I still can't pronounce his name! Called his friend up earlier to check out something.

me: Hey hi, I'm XX...
his friend: Who?
me: I'm XX, XY's wife!
his friend: Whose wife?
me: X...Y...'S WIFE!
his friend: Huh?? OH!! XY's wife arh!!! What did you say? XH?
me: aiyah, don't ask me again lar, I can't pronounce his name!!! NOT even after all these years!!!!

***his friend couldn't stop laughing!!!***

I think it's quite funny too. (",)

Monday, April 13, 2009

A short film ... "Chicken-a-la-Carte"

Click here.

One of the things we taught BY from very young, was not to waste food, starting with his milk. Same with now. He makes a 'wrong' order for his meal, i.e asks for rice and finds later that our noodles taste nicer, he'd still have to eat his rice up first. We have low tolerance for choosiness or greediness and least of all, wastfulness. So he's learning, to take only what he can finish and finish what he has taken.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Egg Hunt Exclaimers & Disclaimers...

Disclaimer #1. I did not make those eggs seen in my previous post. We found them at the market on Good Friday and we bought them. Not much talent required. (",)

Exclaimer #1. Despite the rain, it seemed to me like all the kids had a blast!

Disclaimer #2. I had help from my nephew. Without him, we couldn't have made the egg hunt run so smoothly. He was drenched by the rain, paid with nothing and had to work so hard to hide something like 5 dozen eggs around our estate - twice!!

Exclaimer #2. I saw really well behaved children today. All of them! They listened to our instructions, played fairly and didn't scream, shove or steal.

So thank you our dear friends and family, and your children...for making today such a memorable day for our family. We hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Living & non-living things

So the boy had a worksheet with these instructions:
Circle living things in blue
Circle non-living things in orange

He looked at the picture of the boy... circled it orange.
Me: Hey, the boy is a living thing! It can move!
He moved on to the picture of a plant in a pot... circled it organge.
Me: Whey, the plant is a living thing, it cannot move but it can grow!
He looks at the car, looks at me, looks at the car, circled it blue.

***I smack my own head***

He explained... "Mummy, the car can move!!!"

A simple solution

me on the phone to the small one: Whey! there are ants in the car!
innocent: Why are there ants in the car?
me: Because you drop food in the car so they decided to eat them!
guilty: orh.
me: So how? how are we going to get home with ants in the car to bite us when I pick you up?
activating his brains: Let me think!
me: Okay

*pause*

( me thinks... don't eat in the car , don't drop food in the car, kill the ants? ... )

the boy: I know! *SHOUTING* AH GONG!!! YOU NEED TO SEND ME AND MUMMY BACK HOME LATER! WE GOT ANTS IN OUR CAR!!!!!

Monday, April 06, 2009

Life's full stop

Treasure every minute,
live every moment.
Love fiercely,
but tenderly.
No human is ever perfect,
nor ever yours to keep.
It's too late to wish for more,
when the lights go out.


We lost someone tonight.
Cancer.
A wonderful wonderful person.
Gone.

Rest in peace.

Saturday, April 04, 2009

Insecurity

I'm sticking to my part-time helper but pray very hard that she doesn't make any more stupid oversights - like not locking one of our window grills properly. She locked it, but obviously didn't check if the hook was secure in the catch. Will be hiding those keys from her henceforth.

Maid abusing child

Ask me again why we don't have a maid? Video is very disturbing - Click to view

Friday, April 03, 2009

Green expectations

Lunch hour purchase:

- a packet of north apricot kernels (nan xing)
- a packet of south apricor kernels (bei xing)
- an oz. of zhen zhu chuang bei
~> These are for the small one's weekly pear soup concoction

- a packet of dill seeds
- a packet of eggplant seeds
- a packet of long beans seeds
- a packet of organic soil
~> these are for the big one - who's likes planting things that I cannot eat.

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Some travelling?

Planning:
April Maldives
August/September Europe
October India
December Cruise and/or Hong Kong

Want to go someday:
L.America
Russia ( actually the boy because on the world map, it's the BIGGEST country)
Africa

Year 2014:
FUll YEAR OF TRAVELLING AROUND THE WORLD ... any sponsors?